Recommendations for a radically secure ISA

International audienceThe rising number of attacks targeting processors at micro-architecture level encourages more research on hardware level solutions.In this position paper, we specify a new RV32S “secure” instruction set architecture (ISA) derived from the RV32I RISC-V ISA.We propose modifications in the ISA to prevent timing side-channels, strengthen control flow integrity and ensure micro-architectural state isolation.The goal is to provide a new minimal hardware/software approach through which software attacks exploiting hardware vulnerabilities can be circumvented